March 10, 2006

Baseball Set for 'Nova Classic

By | March 10, 2006

Although still practicing in the friendly confines of the Ramin Room inside Bartels Hall, the baseball team (1-3) will get its second taste of outdoor action today as it travels to Plymouth, Pa., to take on Villanova (6-5), in the first of its three games at the Villanova Baseball Classic.

Cornell will send senior co-captain Rocky Collis to the mound in today’s contest against the Wildcats. Junior Jim Hyland will start tomorrow’s game against La Salle (1-9), and sophomore Bryce Klinesteker will close out the road trip starting the Red’s second game against Villanova on Sunday.

With a 1-3 start to its season last weekend at Bucknell, the Red will look to use this weekend’s games to polish some of its rough edges.

“We want to make sure we have a little more consistent approach overall, whether it be at the plate or in the field,” said head coach Tom Ford. “We saw some good things last weekend. Unfortunately, we came up three games short … We had a couple of letdowns here and there but that stuff can happen the last weekend of the season as well as first weekend of the season.”

The most consistent player at the plate for the Red so far has been senior co-captain Seth Gordon. Batting at the top of the order, Gordon has already collected seven hits in his first 14 at bats. Freshman Brant Mckown has also swung the bat well for Cornell with five hits and three RBIs against Bucknell.

Defensively, Cornell has allowed its opposition to get on the scoreboard early in its first four games. Bucknell scored 20 of their 26 runs against the Red in the first four innings of last weekend’s games.

Both Collis (1-0) and Klinesteker (0-1) boast an ERA of 5.40, as each allowed three runs in five innings of work in their last outings. Hyland was touched up for eight runs in four innings of work against Bucknell last Sunday.

The Red faces two teams this weekend with very dissimilar starts to the 2006 season. Villanova is coming off its spring break trip to Florida, where it went 4-1. Meanwhile, La Salle only picked up its first win of the young season last Monday, and has so far been outscored by its opponents 111-to-33 in 10 games this season.

Cornell has faced the Wildcats only seven times before this weekend, tallying an overall record of 1-6 against Villanova.

“[Villanova’s] always very well-coached. They’re an aggressive team, they run a lot,” Ford said. “We’re going to have to do a pretty good job controlling the running game against them. They’re always solid.”

The Wildcats have already stolen 17 bases this season, while the Red, in just four games, has managed to break the eighth commandment five times on the base paths.

Pacing Villanova at the plate this season has been second basemen Derek Shunk and right fielder James Dolbier. Shunk leads the Wildcats with a .341 batting average, while Dolbier is close behind with a .306 average, knocking in a team-leading 10 RBIs this season.

Although 0-2, the Wildcats’ No. 2 pitcher, Mike Lowe, leads the team in ERA, having given up only six runs in 20 innings of work.

While the Red has a fair idea about what it’s up against today and Sunday, tomorrow’s tilt with La Salle is a little more of a mystery to the Red. The two teams have played each other only once before, with that being on March 5, 2004. La Salle took the game, 8-7.

“I don’t know a heck of a lot about them,” Ford said in an interview this past Wednesday. “We’ll know more about these teams and players hopefully in the next few days.”

Richard Prall leads the Explorers’ batters at the plate, hitting .330 with three doubles and three RBIs. Dan Waters (0-2) is La Salle’s probable starter for tomorrow’s game. He leads the starting rotation in ERA (5.40), strikeouts (12), and innings (17.0).

Related

ByMarch 13, 2006

The third time proved to be the charm for the men’s hockey team on Friday night.

After seeing a pair of goals disallowed, sophomore Raymond Sawada notched his seventh goal of the season in the second overtime, lifting Cornell past Clarkson, 4-3, in Game 1 of the best-of-three ECACHL quarterfinal series.

On the game-winner, senior Chris Abbott won the draw in Clarkson’s left faceoff circle and an on-rushing Sawada snapped it top-shelf past netminder David Leggio.

“We had some great opportunities and had disallowed goals, but our guys did good job in responding to it,” said Cornell head coach Mike Schafer ’86. “After the first overtime, they came back into the locker room and realized there was nothing they could do to control it and they just moved on. I thought we did a good job of getting ourselves opportunities.”

Cornell (19-7-4) could have had the game won during the first overtime session on two occasions. First, just 17 seconds into the interval, freshman Tyler Mugford crashed the net and appeared to get his shot past Leggio, but referee Dave Hansen ruled it off because the Cornell player hit the goaltender before the puck crossed the line.

Then, senior Matt Moulson ripped a shot from the point right at the buzzer which went in the net’s top left corner. However, Hansen waved it off again to the ire of Cornell fans and players, saying time had expired. Replays showed that Moulson’s shot crossed the line in time with 0.1 seconds remaining.

“I’d love to have instant replay,” Schafer said. “Right now, we don’t have that ability and hopefully in our league, especially for the playoffs, we do.”

Cornell took the lead at the 9:26 mark in the first period. After an unsuccessful Cornell power play, freshman Evan Barlow took a pass from classmate Michael Kennedy and went streaking down the right wing unopposed. His initial wrist shot from the right faceoff circle was saved by Clarkson goaltender, David Leggio, but he picked up the rebound and slotted it in for his second goal of the season.

Clarkson (18-16-3) would tie the game up just a minute into the second. Steve Zalewski took the puck along the right boards and took a shot that Cornell junior David McKee blocked. The rebound went to a streaking Shea Guthrie, who knocked it in from close range.

However, just 30 seconds later, Cornell regained its advantage. After receiving a pass from senior Daniel Pegoraro, junior Mark McCutcheon hit a slap shot through a swarm of players that went past Leggio.

“That next shift, whether you score or get scored against is such a big shift,” said Clarkson head coach George Roll. “[McCutcheon] had traffic in front, he threw one at the net from just inside the blue line. David never saw it, he was trying to get around their guy to find it.”

Less than six minutes later, Cornell would double its lead. After a scrum down low, the puck went out to junior defenseman Dan Glover, who had enough time to turn and rip a shot which found a hole between Leggio’s pads. It was Glover’s third goal of the year.

“The fact that anyone can score on any given night really helps our team,” Barlow said. “I think for the most part, when we can not look to Moulson or [junior Byron] Bitz every night, it really helps us not just to rely on our guns, but knowing that we can all contribute.”

Cornell controlled much of the second period, keeping the puck in the Golden Knights’ zone and having several good opportunities. With 2:35 left in the period, Leggio left his net to retrieve the puck, only to see it being taken away from him by junior Byron Bitz. Bitz tried to pass it to an incoming Moulson, but he was unable to get a clean shot on the empty net.

The Red looked to be in the driver’s seat heading into the third period with the lead, however, Clarkson clawed its way back into the game. With 9:26 remaining, Nick Dodge dispossessed a Cornell player behind the net and slotted the puck past junior goaltender David McKee, who made 27 saves on Friday.

More than five minutes later, the Golden Knights tied up the contest. Shawn Weller skated down the ice along the right boards and wristed a shot towards goal. McKee made the save, but the rebound came to an on-rushing Steve Zalewski in the slot, who poked it home. To make matters worse, Glover was knocked out of the game with a little more than three minutes left in the contest after a hit from Mike Willemsen.

“We talked to our guys about putting pucks on net and driving wide and using our speed,” Roll said. “There were two plays when our guys put the puck on net and there were rebounds laying there and we drove the net and able to chip them in.”

Sandwiched between the two disallowed goals was frantic play on both ends of the ice during the first overtime. Cornell, which has only lost once since the beginning of the 2000-01 when having a lead after the first two periods, looked to be in danger of falling behind in the series as Clarkson had several opportunities. Right after Mugford’s disallowed goal, McKee dove out to his left and made the save of the night off a Clarkson shot, tipping the puck with his glove just past the goal.

The Red, which forced Leggio to make 50 saves on Friday, also had numerous opportunities to win the game. Looking fresh in the first overtime after a bye week, Barlow and sophomore Topher Scott fooled the Golden Knights with nifty passing in the slot, but Scott was unable to put his shot on net. The Red outshot Clarkson, 10-4, during that frame.

“I actually thought in the first overtime, they had more legs than we did and I thought in the second, we kind of established a little bit of forecheck, had some chances,” Roll said. “They’re going to be a puck-possession team, they’re going to have the puck for a lot of the game, you’ve got to stay patient and I think our guys did a good job with that.”

The second overtime period was played at a similarly frantic pace, partially also due to the fact that the officials did not call a penalty for the final 38:03 of the game. Eventually, something had to give and at the 11:30 mark, Sawada became the hero at 10:39 p.m. on Friday night.

ByMarch 13, 2006

A lucky 21 percent of the record-setting applicant pool for Cornell’s class of ’10 – over 28,000 applications for 3,000 freshman spots were received this year – will be mailed “fat envelopes” on March 30. “I know a lot of you have a personal interest in that date; that’s why I mention it,” Rawlings told a chuckling Board of Trustees Friday morning. Rawlings attributed the phenomenal 35 percent increase in applications over the past two years to a combination of “artificial reasons” and “encouraging trends.”

The University’s acceptance rate’s corresponding plunge to 21 percent is a steep drop from the odds facing the class of ’07, which had a 31 percent admission rate.

Last Friday morning, Interim President Hunter Rawlings III; Tim Lim ’06, president of the Student Assembly, and Timothy McConnochie grad, president of the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly (GPSA), remarked on a gamut of current campus concerns, ranging from the aftermath of the Feb. 18 West Campus stabbing to the allocation of Student Assembly Finance Commission (SAFC) funds, during the open session of the Board of Trustees meeting.

Rawlings reported that Charles Holiday, the Feb. 18 stabbing victim who was a visitor to Cornell from Union College, has returned home from the hospital and is taking a leave of absence from school this semester to recover from injuries. The university remains in close contact with his family.

Alleged attacker Nathan Poffenbarger ’08 awaits a trial by grand jury, which may occur sometime in late April, according to Gwen Wilkinson, Tompkins County district attorney. Subsequent to the attack, student groups and individuals have criticized Cornell’s emergency-response protocol.

Rawlings acknowledged the shortcomings of how the incident was handled – “We recognize we should have put out information earlier” – and went on to emphasize a concerted campus effort to make the necessary changes to improve the system.

To what extent the attack may have been racially motivated is a question that has led the Cornell community into debate over broader issues of race and diversity on campus, which Rawlings presented to the trustees as a constructive phenomenon. He called the cooperation between the Cornell administration and the coalition of twenty student groups that organized the anti-racism rally on Ho Plaza “a very positive experience,” in which the students “brought concerns forward in a very forceful, but, I think, very reasonable manner.”

Rawlings said that the topic of having a required course in diversity is “a vexing question – one that has come up before.” Nevertheless he praised the recent efforts, as seen in “the excellent dialogue between students, faculty and involved administration [like Provost Biddy Martin].”

“A diversity plan is in the works and should be ready in a few weeks to present to the campus community,” said Rawlings.

Despite what he called “a great deal of work [still] to do,” Rawlings provided the trustees with some encouraging numbers on campus diversity. Cornell experienced a 58 percent increase in African-American applicants in the past two years and recently won an $810,800 share of the $6.78 million Jack Kent Cooke Foundation grant, which is awarded to eight elite universities to facilitate the transfer of low-income, high-achieving community college students into selective four-year institutions.

According to a Cornell press release on Mar. 6, “One of the major motivations behind the Cooke Foundation grants is to diversify the socioeconomic spectrum of major competitive colleges and universities.”

Lim announced the establishment of another new fund on campus, the Renewable Energy Fund, which was initiated and brought to the Student Assembly for approval by student group Kyoto Now. The fund earns Cornell renewable energy credits from the state of New York by agreeing to purchase a certain percentage of campus electricity from renewable energy sources. He called this commitment symbolic of Cornell’s priorities and warned that we are one of the last in the Ivy League to commit funds to this type of project, with “Harvard [being the first] to take the step forward